116 • COUNTERTERRORISM
lish an independent state, Eelam, which began in 1983, outside Sri
Lanka, apart from the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. This
single example was intended to stop India’s support of the Colombo
government, and the LTTE’s activities in London are quite overt,
with much emphasis on fundraising, prompting frequent protests
from the Sri Lankan Embassy.
Altogether, MI5 monitors 21 separate nondomestic organizations
that are the subject of proscription in the United Kingdom and keeps
a further unknown number under discreet surveillance. Some pose
minimal threat in London, such as the Abu Sayyaf Group, based in
the Philippines, which has a history of seizing Western hostages and
is known to have links to Libya and bin Laden. Aum Shinrikyo (‘‘Su-
preme Truth’’), which released deadly Sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo
subway in March 1995 and killed five passengers, is essentially a reli-
gious sect established in 1987 by Shoko Asahara. The cult has global
ambitions and at one time was a recognized religion that contested
elections in Japan. After being outlawed in 1995, it has spread abroad
and claims many thousands of adherents in a dozen countries, includ-
ing Britain. The other Japanese group on MI5’s list is the Japanese
Red Army (JRA), led by the elusive Fusako Shigenobu and based in
the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. The JRA’s bloody
history dates back to a massacre at Lod Airport in 1972, and its sup-
port of the Palestinian cause spreads into a wider, anticapitalist, anti-
imperialist field.
Among the other Asian terrorist groups are the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU), dedicated to the removal of President Karimov
from Tashkent. Although the IMU has only limited support within
the Muslim community of Uzbekistan, which comprises 85 percent
of the population, and mainly conducts its terrorism with car bombs,
it is represented in London.
Apart from the 14 Irish groups on the British proscribed list, the
two principal European terrorist organizations active in the United
Kingdom are the Basque separatists of ETA, who are known to have
been in contact with the ProvisionalIrish Republican Army, and
the Greek 17 November Revolutionary Organization, often known as
N17 and named after a 1973 student uprising against the military dic-
tatorship. N17 has its Marxists roots in Athens and has not been ac-
tive outside Greece, but it has a history of assassinating journalists